


Three Corners

by BlackEyedGirl



Category: A Sudden Wild Magic - Diana Wynne Jones
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Gen, M/M, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 16:46:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/599945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackEyedGirl/pseuds/BlackEyedGirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What Philo, Tod and Josh did before, and after, Zillah Green came to Arth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Corners

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Signe (oxoniensis)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oxoniensis/gifts).



> **Notes:** Mentions of canonical unwanted sexual advances, and canonical threats of sexual assault.

On the transport to Arth, Philo tried to make himself as unnoticed as possible. He didn’t think he had many particular skills, but he was better at hiding than someone might guess, considering the disadvantages he had. It took energy to do it properly though, and he couldn’t just hide for the whole year. 

He hadn’t been able to hide in front of the Gualdian either. The Gualdian had called Philo in and looked him up and down, from his pale face to his outsized feet. He had nodded, thoughtfully, as though Philo made an answer to a question he had been considering. And then he had told Philo that he would be recommending him to the king as the gualdian representative for the year’s service on Arth. 

Philo was the only one of his people chosen this year. That was unusual: Philo didn’t remember it ever happening like that before. On the transport, the humans seemed to have formed clans already, little disorganised gangs, shoving together in the small space allocated to new servicemen. Some of them had similar inked signs on their arms or necks, unusual even in humans, and which would be almost unheard of for a gualdian. One of them noticed him staring. He strode towards Philo, legs braced apart, arms swinging. “Problem, runt?”

Philo answered, politely if untruthfully, “No.” He had problems with being on this strange carriage, which upset his balance as though it tossed on waves, though he knew it was spelled to move smoothly. He had problems with being landed on Arth for a year, away from his clan and the Trenjen Orthe. And he had problems with this strutting human who scowled as if Philo had insulted him simply by looking at him. But, “No,” he said again. 

You couldn’t be a gualdian like Philo and also be the kind of person who started fights. If you were like Philo, you learned to be quiet, and polite, and tried not to draw too much attention to yourself. This was not the start he would have chosen.

 

*

Josh was the only centaur on Arth. There was no chance at all that anyone was going to think that it had been some other centaur who embarrassed themselves during the High Head’s speech, or another centaur who still couldn’t work even the basics of the magework they did here. Even among other centaurs, Josh had always been the one who couldn’t run like the rest, whose stride didn’t match the herd. But at least with them, while he was on the wrong end of a curve, he was not out on his own. 

In the dormitory, Josh had a space at the end of the room, where a bed had been removed. They had put all the new servicemen into two adjoining dorms – there were more rooms but not enough servicemen to fill them. Josh assumed that the centaur servicemen usually had different rooms to these. There were scrapes on the floor where two beds had been dragged out of the far side of this room to make space, and nothing installed for him to lean against. The wall was always cold, but Josh didn’t feel much like lying down. 

It was different at home. They leant against each other to sleep by preference, when they were not lying down. Josh had never been the most liked – as he grew but his promised powerful abilities failed to materialise, as he continued to be knock-kneed and sway-backed - but centaurs looked out for their own. They had their own mage-work and their own ideas about how the Orthe should be run. And while they worked among humans, they rarely worked directly with them. There were a lot of centaur guardsmen, for example, who were part of all-centaur patrols. It was possible that some of the other servicemen here had never interacted with a centaur who wasn’t trying to arrest them. Knowing that didn’t make Josh feel much better. He slept leaning against the wall, for minutes-long stretches. He was still caught by surprise in the morning, when some of the other servicemen spelled the blue floor outside their room to be like glass, and his four legs slipped from under him. He tried to climb back onto his feet, but the floor resisted him and the boys only laughed. Josh pulled his magic to his legs, tottering to upright. He tried to smile. They were joking, he knew. They hadn’t seriously meant to hurt him. They couldn’t have meant that.

 

*

Tod was naturally convivial – he came from a large family, so he spent his childhood and young adulthood surrounded by his sisters and by cousins and nieces and nephews. He had known that on Arth he would miss his father and mother, and women, and his beautiful car. He had not expected to simply miss having company. He had been here for a week, and it was clear that as far as the other servicemen went, Tod’s very presence offended them. Tod didn’t think he could rightly be held responsible for being high-born, and it was not as though he went around demanding people to call him by his long list of titles. Goddess, even the _mages_ behaved as though Tod’s birthright was something to be sneered at. It was a shock, after being at home, where his father had made sure Tod understood that his birthright was precious, something to be mastered and understood, not an unfortunate character trait to be squashed out of him. 

He had no shortage of dining companions back home in Frinjen, but here he had already learned that it was safer to eat alone. Tod cast his eyes over the rest of the mess hall. There were a few other outliers: the gualdian boy, and the centaur, also sitting alone at the far ends of tables.

The gualdian wasn’t alone for long. One of the louts – a boy with a thin sneering face - idled up to him and said something which made the gualdian’s pale skin flush. Tod wasn’t close enough to hear what had been said, but when the other boy shoved the gualdian’s shoulder, Tod pushed away from his table. He couldn’t stand bullies. When he got closer, he could make out some nasty whispers, something about the gualdian and Brother Wilfred, of all people, which Tod knew had to be a lie because Tod couldn’t imagine anyone going near that sanctimonious prick voluntarily. He made it to the table. “Hello, I’m Tod, who are you then?”

The gualdian blinked his huge eyes. “Philo.”

Philo’s clearly-not-a-friend also stared. “No one asked you here, highness, why don’t you keep your nose out of it.”

“Ah,” Tod said, “no, you see, I’m the _Duke_ of Haurbath. That makes me his grace, not his highness. It’s an easy mistake to make.” He smiled brightly. “And you are?”

From behind Tod, someone said, “He’s Tir, I’m Rax.” Rax, Tod unfortunately already knew. Rax said, “So why don’t you-.”

Heavy clopping steps crossed the room slowly. Tod looked around in surprise to see the centaur, walking over to stand beside Tod. A centaur’s movements being something which didn’t happen surreptitiously, one of the brothers finally noticed the excitement and pointed at them. “Back to your tables. Now!” Tod’s reputation as a troublemaker is really unjustified.

Rax and Tir slunk away, Tir making a fairly obscene gesture in Philo’s direction as he went. 

Tod sat down at the table and looked at the centaur. “I’m Tod, this is Philo. Fancy eating with us today?”

He walked closer to the table. “I’m Josh.”

“Excellent. Now come along, if you don’t eat your passet soon it’ll go cold, and we all know that completely ruins the flavour.”

Tod watched as Philo cast him a curious, bewildered look, before he recognised that Tod was joking. A small smile crept onto his face. “That would be terrible,” he said solemnly. 

“So we’re agreed,” Tod said. He looked up at Josh. “Staying then?”

Josh turned carefully, taking up a better position beside the table. “Are you really a Duke?”

Tod buried his head in his hands. “If I say no, can we just forget that part of the conversation?” He looked through his fingers. The other two were shaking their heads. This may not have been one of Tod’s better decisions. He couldn’t bring himself to regret it.

 

*

One of the best things about having Tod and Josh as friends, Philo thought, was that neither of them questioned him very hard when he told them that they all needed to go and be somewhere else for the rest of the day. At least, they don’t question him before they move. After they had found some out of the way spot near an unused set of living quarters, Tod looked at him and said, “Who is it now?”

Philo sighed. “Weland.”

“Have you considered, and I know this is a radical thought, Philo, making it clear that you’re not actually interested? Not even a little bit.”

“I was clear!”

“You were too polite,” Tod said. “Some of these mages need to be told firmly. By force, if necessary.”

“I just don’t...” 

Tod looked thoughtful. “We could put it about that _we_ were tumbling, I suppose. Or do you think they would just try to tempt you away from me?”

Philo sometimes had to remind himself that Tod doesn’t think like other people. He looked at Josh for support. 

Josh rolled his eyes and said calmly, “I don’t think that would help.”

“Why ever not? You don’t think they would believe it? I’m plenty pretty enough to be rolling in the hay with Philo.” Tod smiled in what he probably imagined was a winning fashion.

“You made it very clear – to everyone,” Josh said, “that you’re just waiting for your service to be over so you can get back to the pretty girls in Frinjen. I don’t think they would believe you’ve suddenly decided to be interested in men.”

“That’s just for...” Tod waved his hand about, “preventative purposes. I mean, I _am_ waiting to get back to Frinjen, but it’s not even mostly about the pretty girls back there.”

They heard a noise coming towards them. Philo reached for his magic and wrapped a cloak of it around them. 

Inside it, Tod whistled. “Wow.”

Josh hushed him but Philo could manage to hide the sound as easily as their bodies. It’s easier, truthfully, because it doesn’t need to be matched so closely with the surrounding area. The sight of this corner needs to match a corner without them in it, but the sound can just be dimmed so only the three of them can hear it. 

“Seriously,” Tod said. “This is really good work.”

Philo warmed under the praise, though it was unearned. Disguise work isn’t difficult. 

Tod jostled him companionably, as though he could tell what Philo was thinking. “Seriously.”

“All right,” Philo conceded, if it would make Tod happy. Tod smiled, and that was something to warm under as well.

 

*

Arth claimed to have been built for both humans and the five peoples equally. Josh wasn’t sure. Plenty of the citadel was ramped, easy for centaur servicemen to travel around it, but the higher up you went, the less that held true. In the towers there were still stepped areas which couldn’t be traversed easily on four legs. There were also narrow passages around the stores that would fit neither a centaur nor a griffin. This place was designed for humans, with the others an afterthought. Josh knew that a lot of the Pentarchy was that way. 

It meant that he was easily trapped in corners, when he reached a spot which wasn’t wide enough for him to turn. It was more difficult for him to go backwards than forwards, particularly on Arth’s narrow stairways. The other servicemen had worked that out in the first week: if they could corner him before starting up, they would. So what Josh had decided to do was to walk through as much of the citadel as he could, so he was never forced into a dead-end. 

Tod looked around at the winding pathway and remarked, “You do bring us to the most interesting places, Josh.”

Philo shot a sly smile at Josh before looking at Tod. “Whereas the expedition to the buttery storeroom was a true adventure?”

“They have to be keeping the decent beer somewhere,” Tod said. “I refuse to believe that passet beer is what the brothers drink when they lock themselves away in their studies. Unless it’s not about beer at all, but that is an even more horrifying thought. So I choose to believe there are secret supplies around somewhere.”

“I would settle for decent coffee,” Philo said. 

Josh listened to them make cooing noises about coffee and meat pies. Josh had no strong feelings about either of those things, but he missed fresh vegetables. It struck him that there was no real reason that Arth couldn’t grow proper fruit and vegetables, except that they wanted to keep things here as bare as possible. It didn’t work: Josh knew of at least one private still, to say nothing of the mages and brothers continually hoping that Philo would relent just for them. Rules would be all well and good if everyone kept them. Or if you signed up to keep them. Josh wasn’t feeling the honour of his call to Arth today.

Tod was watching him. “All right, Josh?”

“We could get in trouble, you know. The Arth Service Laws say-.”

“Wouldn’t know,” Tod said. “Haven’t read them.” Josh had read them cover to cover, but he was not surprised that Tod hadn’t. Tod had the kind of casual certainty of someone who had always been able to get what they wanted, with rules an afterthought. Josh supposed that it came from being an heir, or perhaps just from being wealthy.

“You’re the one who wanted to go exploring,” Philo said. That part was true. Philo and Tod had just followed him. 

“You didn’t need to come with me,” Josh said.

Philo shrugged. “You came with me.” That was different. Philo needed to be flanked when he made his escapes.

Tod draped his arm over Josh’s back. “And anyway, we would much rather be down here with you than anywhere else without you.” He smiled brightly. “The others are in the yard. Dark and damp tunnels beat that any day.”

He meant it, Josh thought: Tod hid his sincerity underneath his endless chatter. Tod could, Josh thought, get along all right with the other men, if he was more willing to play along. But he was too clever, and too fond of arguing, and so he was hiding in the hallways with Philo and Josh instead. Josh grinned. “Let’s keep going then.”

 

*

If you absolutely had to sleep in military-style dormitories, Tod reasoned, at least you could do it with your friends. Neither his money nor his connections got him very far here, but he had a few favours he could call in to get his sleeping assignment changed. Getting Philo’s changed proved slightly trickier, but it helped that Josh was in a spot all of his own and no one else was fighting for the beds near the centaur. They were perfectly happy to torment him while he was awake, but the gangs didn’t want to sleep near their best target.

Josh still looked doubtful. “Why?”

“Because I can. And because sleeping nearer these louts than I have to makes me nervous. We can back each other up.” 

Tod looked over in the night to see Josh sleeping standing up, leaning against the wall. Centaurs didn’t lie down to sleep much, he remembered, especially not if they were feeling wary. He wondered how much real sleep Josh had got since they came here. Even Tod didn’t feel like he was well rested, between the early starts and the terrible food, and he didn’t have to worry so much about ‘jokes’ being played on him in classes. Rax and his cronies didn’t like Tod, but they would pick an easier target if they could find one. Tod had to be the one to make the effort to get into a true fight with one of them, though it was admittedly not _much_ of an effort.

On his other side, Philo had pulled his hands close to his face, arms crossed over his chest. It was the way Michael used to sleep when he was small, visiting Tod and missing his mother. Tod used to tease him about it, and his father would scold him.

Tod couldn’t stand the way this homesickness snuck up on him. He had been perfectly all right not two minutes ago and now his eyes were filling up like a baby. 

Philo’s eyes opened. “Tod?”

“Go back to sleep,” Tod said, not sounding convincing even to his own ears. “It’s fine.”

“Are you all right?”

“ _Fine_ ,” he growled. He wiped the shameful tears away.

Philo was not fooled. He crossed the gap between their beds quietly, coming to sit on the edge of Tod’s bed. Tod sat up, more to tell Philo to go and lie back down than for any other reason, and Philo wrapped his arms around Tod. 

Tod could hear Josh then, whispering, “Philo? Tod?”

Tod scrambled out of bed before Josh could try and sneak over here too. The last thing he needed was Josh to wake the whole room and find Tod crying. He would never hear the end of it. 

Philo followed after him, trailing the blankets with him. Seeing that, Josh did settle to lie down, with his legs folded under him. Tod gave in and sat down with him, pressed to Josh’s warm horse-side. Philo covered them both with the blankets. “Better now?”

Tod glared at him through his still-watery eyes. “Fine. Let it go.” 

Philo hugged him tightly in what was probably meant to be another tease. Tod turned his face into the thin cotton of Philo’s sleep-shirt and pretended to tolerate being held.

 

* * *

The boys form the other corners of her compass points. Zillah stands north and calls; they answer. Philo’s all-encompassing protection, Josh’s familial concern, and Tod’s fierce strength. She hadn’t realised before how much of his magic Tod kept in check. There is no check now; she calls wild and the only thing to hold the magic together is that it is four of them, to the four corners.

They hold, for just long enough, until she has both Amandas anchoring and Mark back in Herrel’s body. They hold longer than they should, long past what anyone else could have done. She sees Tod laughing, punch-drunk, and Philo and Josh folded over the table with their arms around each other. 

Zillah offers them a place to stay – this is Mark- Herrel’s home and it is hers now too.

Philo shakes his head, Josh too, without looking to check with each other first. 

Tod says, “We’d rather not, Zillah, if you don’t mind. This place is still- I’ll come and see you and Marcus soon. But I should really go home.”

Zillah has worked out that Tod’s home is very near to this place, but she knows that Philo and Josh are from further away. Truthfully, Zillah is not sure of how well she will manage in this house, how much of the bad feeling she got when she walked in was Marceny, and how much is the house itself. She knows that buildings can have a vibe all of their own, like Arth does, but then like Arth a place can change. The next time they visit, this house will be different. 

Josh swings Marcus off his back and hands him to Zillah, embracing them both. Philo hugs her even more tightly, ruffling Marcus’s hair. Tod’s hold is gentler and he kisses her cheek. “I’ll see you soon, Zillah Green.”

Philo leans his arm on Josh’s back, as though he’s in Arth and dizzy from the slopes, though Zillah suspects Josh isn’t in much condition to hold anyone up right now. Perhaps they prop each other up.

Tod fills in easily on Josh’s other side, covering Philo’s arm with his own. 

The compass stretches to an arrow – she the fixed point and they a narrow tip. The magic holds, through all the steps they take away.

 

* * *

Tod has had no reason to put a centaur in the back of his car before. Josh scrambles, ungainly, into the back seat and mutters urgently about the upholstery.

“I don’t care about the damn upholstery,” Tod says. “You’re not galloping back in that state.” Whatever tenuous strength the need to warn Tod and save Marcus had lent him, it is long gone now. He and Philo had spent the few hours afterwards slumped against each other’s sides, and now Josh is pale and drawn.

“Where are we going?” Philo asks. “Not back to-.”

“No,” Tod says. “Definitely not. Back to Amanda and Paul – we can stay there for the night. Someone will send word to my father and I’m sure we can let your families know too. People will have been worried about you, Josh.”

“Me?”

“All of the Riverwell centaurs were talking about the ghost.”

Philo asks, “Ghost?” turning around in the passenger seat to look at Josh.

“Josh managed to project himself into half the groves in the Pentarchy,” Tod says. “Trying to get a message out.”

Philo’s eyes grow wide. “Is that how they found us?” He scrambles into the back of the car, where there is not enough room at all, to hug Josh again. 

Tod wants, badly, to crawl in there with them. He keeps his hands on the steering wheel and his eyes on the two of them in the mirror.

 

*

Josh had never felt so grateful in his life as the moment he saw Tod facing his sending. He had truly thought that woman would kill him, and he had not wanted to die alone in that unknown grove. 

By the time he saw Tod, he had almost given up. He had been so tired, and had been hiding for so long. But Tod had been certain, the way Tod was always certain, so sure that if Josh would only stay there that Tod could get to him. 

In the grove, a man had ridden in on the back of a centaur – redheaded and looking like nothing so much as another Philo. “You’re Josh?” he asked.

“Michael,” Josh realised. “You must be Michael.” Tod talks of his family often and Michael would be the person Tod would send. 

“That’s me,” Michael agreed. 

“Where’s Tod?”

“He went-.” He had pointed, and Josh went galloping towards the house. He hadn’t known until he got there if he had enough left to be any use, but he couldn’t have left Tod and Philo alone.

Josh hadn’t felt quite right in himself until he had both Tod and Philo in his sights again. Centaurs don’t do well alone. When they have driven back, Tod’s people open up their house to all of them. This place _has_ been built for centaurs, and there are others of his kind both outside and inside the house. Josh goes looking for another room instead.

Philo is sitting on the edge of a bed. Tod is lying under the covers. He startles awake when Josh trots in, and looks up. “Oh.”

“Did I wake you?” Josh asks.

“It’s all right,” Tod says. “I was dreaming of Otherworld. Thought I was still stuck there.”

Philo pats Tod’s shoulder absently and looks at Josh. “Get some sleep.” Josh doesn’t think he’ll be able to do that. Philo rolls his eyes. “Tod’s been awake for two days straight, and you spent most of today casting sendings. I’ll stay up and keep a watch.”

There should be no need of a watch, but that is what makes Josh relent. He folds his legs underneath himself and settles in on the rug on the floor. Tod knocks a pillow from the bed at Josh’s chest, and Josh curls his upper body around it. He closes his eyes once and reopens them. Philo is still there, sitting crosslegged on the bed beside Tod. Tod mutters anxiously in his sleep and Philo touches his arm. Josh falls asleep.

 

*

They’re leaving Riverwell later this afternoon. Tod is going to his father, Philo will catch the train North, and Josh will take the train back towards the capital. They could have left already, but Amanda wanted to send some packages to Philo’s family, so he is waiting for her to be finished putting them together. The other two do not have to stay, but they make no mention of going. Tod announces that they should go for a walk while they wait. 

Philo is tired, but not the kind of tired where staying inside might help him. He still feels cold. He has been cold since Marceny struck him with her magic. Everyone knows what happens to gualdians in Leathe. He had been calm for as long as he could but they are done now and he is still cold.

Tod looks at him shivering. Philo is wearing his Arth uniform again, after the dress he was disguised in before. Tod leans over to fix the buttons on Philo’s jacket. “Here.”

“Thank you.”

Tod’s relatives have invited them inside again, but Josh wanted to sit by the water, and since their casting they haven’t managed to wander very far from each other. Where one goes, all go. Philo supposes that is not so very much different from Arth, except that they have more options for places to go, and still not take them.

The sun is warm here, even in the late evening, and Philo can see why Tod likes Frinjen so much. He still cannot wait to see Trenjen, and breathe in the air of the mountains, but Josh pulls him down to the ground beside him and Philo leans against his side. Tod sits beside Philo, wrapping his arm around Philo’s shoulders. Philo folds his arm up to cover Tod’s fingers.

“Are you all right?” Tod asks. “I was so tired last night I didn’t really ask. When Josh told me where you were...”

“And your arm,” Josh adds. 

Philo rubs that arm, feeling the twinges still. He puts his head on Tod’s shoulder and smiles. “They weren’t so very interested in me,” he says. “I don’t imagine any of them were very enthusiastic about-.” Everyone knows what they do to gualdians in Leathe. Philo has heard about the ones who didn’t get away. He has seen some of the ones who did, who wouldn’t come closer to the other gualdians than they had to. Philo had been exiled from his people for months, but that is nothing to the self-enforced distance these men exercise.

Tod clasps Philo’s hand. “Well I’m glad for that, but it just shows they weren’t looking very hard.”

“Tod?”

“That girl,” he says, “the king’s one, Aliky. She was impressed. The king was too. We knew already, of course.”

“It was Zillah, really,” Philo says. He has never felt power like she had, the moment Tod and Josh came to form the points around her. It was unlike anything he’s ever known.

“Not on her own,” Tod insists. “My own birthright was screaming and that was before my magic had even touched yours. That was something new.”

Paul comes across the stream to call them back into the house. Amanda has finished, and they can go. Philo and Tod offer Josh a hand each to get him back onto his four feet.

Tod smiles, something tremulous in it, but his words are casual. “Let’s get you two to the station then. Time to go back to reality.” Time to go home.

 

*

“So not only do we steal from another world instead of creating our own solutions,” Tod says, raising his voice, “but we completely ignore the different magical perspectives offered by the Other Peoples. Hellspoke, we can’t even manage to properly consider the Azandi practices for divination, we keep on stumbling around with our own methods which we know perfectly well are going to show six different results for six different mages. We don’t _learn_ anything.”

His father raises his eyebrows mildly. “You seem quite passionate about this.”

Tod’s father thinks his time away has changed him. For Tod, who spent his whole time in Arth and then in Otherworld denying that he could learn anything there, it is unfortunate. But he cannot deny that he is different now.

Tod visited Zillah, who set Marcus on his lap and bestowed a small smile upon him. “Everything’s different now.”

She is, certainly. That wall he once saw around her is gone, or else extended so far away from her that it encompasses Herrel, and Marcus, and Tod, Philo and Josh. There is a calm to her that wasn’t there before.

Tod feels less calm than he has ever been. All he had wanted was to get off Arth as soon as possible and now that he is home and safe, he doesn’t know what to do with himself. All that his father had asked was whether Tod thought the new laws of Arth would yield better results. 

Truthfully, Tod doesn’t know. He can’t see how they would do worse, but there are centuries of bad practice to be overturned and while he had seen very clearly how those Otherworld women could upturn a place, what matters now is what they build in its place. And it is always easier to build new things in the shape of the first. It takes so much more effort to create things entirely new.

 

*

Josh hears that the new Acting High Head of Arth is Brother Edward, who ran Healing Horn. The Brother had been good to Josh when he got himself bruised or battered, especially that last time with his eye. Josh thinks they could have picked worse. Maybe things will be better there soon. Josh is still glad to have his hooves solidly on the soft grass of the central Orthe. 

His family and the rest of his people want to talk to him about what happened. He caused them a fright, before they had even known it was him – the talk of a ghost centaur at Riverwell. None of his own cousins had reached Riverwell before Tod started on his expedition to Leathe, but they had been headed that direction. Josh’s name had been passed back as the herd travelled, so that by the time Josh had left Tod and Philo behind, his parents had been informed that Josh was the one in trouble.

He thinks that they may not have been so very surprised by that. Josh has always been the one who needed looking after, the weakest of the herd. But Josh was without his own people for months and he didn’t tumble down a set of stairs or get lost in an unknown forest or find himself banished from the groves. He helped get them all out of Arth and he helped call Tod and the others to Leathe. He has only recently understood all of that.

The king visits their part of the Orthe. He asks to speak to Horgoc Anphalemos Galpetto a Cephelad. Josh’s cousin blinks. “ _Josh_?”

But it is true, the king wants to speak to Josh. They hadn’t really spoken before, not when the king had pulled Josh from a line-up of more suitable centaur candidates for Arth, and not afterwards when Josh was exhausted from his sendings and had Philo curled tight against his chest. 

The king makes polite niceties and Josh tries to respond properly. The king then says, “They will abolish the service-year, of course.”

“Good.”

He raises his eyebrows at Josh. “Indeed?”

“Sorry, Your Majesty, but that is good.”

“Oh, don’t be sorry. I just wasn’t sure that you would feel that way. You seem to have learned quite a lot in your time there, if the demonstration in Lady Marceny’s Grove was any indication.”

“I didn’t learn anything from the Brothers – anything I learned was from Zillah and from Philo and Tod, and when it happened we all just-.”

“You did what needed to be done,” the king says.

“Yes.”

“And would you have done that, I wonder, without your time away?”

“The _only_ good thing that happened in Arth was that I met-.” Josh stops. “Sorry, Your Majesty.”

“Please don’t apologise. I’m simply very curious. Your young friend Roderick Gordano has been making quite a noise in the higher circles of the Pentarchy about the need for magical teaching to be reformed. Apparently our current methods quite ignore the vital role played by the magics of the Other Peoples, as his time in Arth would demonstrate.”

“Tod said that?” Josh asks.

“Repeatedly. Now, Roderick may have a good few years yet before he becomes Pentarch – his father is not a young man but he is in rude health – still, there are plenty of men and women in the Pentarchy willing to listen to what he has to say. This is a man who forced his own way back from Otherworld, so naturally he is considered a very powerful mage. And then I recalled, of course, that you and Philo aided Zillah Green in her own impossible descent from Arth. This was even before the truly impressive magic displayed in the grove.”

“That was different,” Josh says, “and it wasn’t anything we learned from Arth. We were together, that’s all.”

“Well then,” the king says, “it strikes me that you did learn something on Arth after all. Even if what you learned was not from those instructors chosen for you.”

Josh stares at him mutely.

“You’re quite right about the service year, of course. Gordano has also been quite vocal about that. But the principle, I think, is very interesting. Don’t you?”

He talks some more about the Orthe, and the centaur guardsmen in the King’s Grove, before taking a polite leave.

Josh’s mother comes to talk to him. “And _what_ was that all about?”

“I think I need to go to Frinjen.”

“The last time you were in Frinjen you were nearly killed.”

“Frinjen was afterwards,” Josh says, “and we got out okay.” Leaving Frinjen had been easier than leaving Arth: no magic, only a train, and watching Philo and Tod through the glass. 

 

*

Philo does not have his second cousin’s second sight. He can’t say how he knows that he will be going to Frinjen soon to see Tod, but he knows that he is.

He has spent the past few months in the Trenjen Orthe, relearning his family and how to measure the bounds of his magic. He is surprised to find that, whatever happened in the Marceny Grove, it hasn’t stopped. His magic stretches farther from him than it ever did before, and the strength behind it is greater. He wonders if it is the same for Tod and Josh. He wonders a lot about Tod and Josh. He wonders about the word he is beginning to hear from gualdians in the Frinjen Orthe, that the Gordanos are starting to make waves. And then he gets onto a train to Frinjen.

Tod’s part of the Pentarchy is more inhabited than Philo’s. There is no shortage of people to ask when Philo needs to know how to reach Archrest Castle. Once he gets close, he doesn’t need to ask any more. Since they have been friends, Philo has never had to work particularly hard to find Josh and Tod when they are nearby. Location magic is the other side of the wheel from disguise magic, but Philo has always found those two things easiest to master. Once, long ago, the gualdians were trackers of the woods and mountains, and Philo is a throwback to those times. It has been three months since he waved goodbye to Tod at the station, minutes after seeing Josh onto his own train.

The feeling bubbles in his chest, the closer he gets to Archrest. This is where he is supposed to be. The world feels as though it is pulling in close around him, and Philo finds himself reaching out to meet it, folding into a point.

The castle looms on the horizon, resolving into a large grey shape, with a small dark shadow at its foot. Across the fields surrounding the castle, another shape is moving quickly. 

Tod reaches Philo first, laughing and wrapping his arms around him, and then, finally, clumsily kissing his cheek. “I felt you coming.” He turns to accept Josh into the triangle. “And you too.” Another kiss, from Tod whose eyes are wet. “Don’t say a word,” he warns them. “What are you both doing here?”

Josh looks at Philo over Tod’s shoulder and raises his eyebrow. “I’m here because the king told me Tod was starting some sort of revolution. What about you?”

Philo is still not sure. He is here because the three of them together did something that none of them could have done apart, and because long before that happened, or any of them knew it could, they came to sit with him at dinner. He says, “Well, Tod definitely needs someone to look after him.”

“I will have you know,” Tod says grandly, “that if anyone needs rescuing, it has always been you two. I am perfectly all right, actually.” He pauses. “Though help would be nice. The king keeps asking what I _mean_ by things, and if Frinjen is going to endow some real schools of magecraft, and really all I wanted to do was to show that Arth was going about the whole thing backwards.”

“What do you mean?” Josh asks.

“Throw everyone up into the clouds and follow the same damned patterns they’ve been following for years to address an entirely new situation. When what they _should_ do is come down here and pick a problem. Then figure out the method from that, and if it’s a centaur method or a gualdian method or anything else, then we solve it like that.”

“There are a lot of problems,” Philo says. Tod sounds serious about this but he had never mentioned before that he planned to use his Fiveir to change the Pentarchy. Before, he had been concerned about getting home, and about Zillah, and about Josh and Philo. He had not seemed so very interested in politics.

Tod takes a deep breath. “The Goddess spoke to me. Before I got back to Riverwell. I thought she just meant for me to get to Zillah and help fix that but ever since I got home it’s as though- there’s a whole piece missing. She meant more than just that.”

Josh whistles through his teeth. The Goddess makes herself manifest to only a few. If she made herself visible to Tod, then her task must be a vital one. What the king did in sending the High Head away was only a start.

Philo says, “You couldn’t have mentioned that before?”

“I didn’t _know_ before,” Tod says, “and even if I had, what was I supposed to say? ‘I’m pretty sure the Goddess wants me to work on upturning every idea the poor old brothers ever had about learning new magic’?”

“It would have been a start,” Josh says.

“Plus,” Philo adds, “you wouldn’t have needed to say all that. You could just have said that we should stay.” Their magic is wild, but that does not mean undirected. With the three of them, they can do things which any one of them could not do alone. The Brothers understood that only in the vaguest sense. They had understood the numbers but not the way the magic moved around the wheel.

Tod blinks, and then a smile is surprised onto his face. He grabs one of Philo’s hands and one of Josh’s. “You should. I’ve been telling my parents all about you, and you haven’t met my sisters, and I know Zillah wants to see you again soon.” He is glowing with enthusiasm; Philo hadn’t properly noticed before how pale Tod had still looked when they said goodbye at the railway station. 

Philo is the one to lean closer this time, pressing a kiss to Tod’s mouth and then Josh’s. “Then the Goddess bless our plans.” It is only one idea, brand new to this world, but one idea would be enough to make a start.


End file.
